Racing Bicycles & Sticky Popsicle Lips
by croeuf
Summary: AU One-Shot. Jean runs to Eren's house, ready to brag about his new bicycle and how fast it is; ready to beat him in a race. However, his plan is deterred when his quiet adoptive sister, Mikasa, answers the door and tells him Eren isn't home. Who will race bikes with him now?


**Here's a tiny result of a prompt request on my side writing blog on tumblr. I thought it was adorable, and was really fun to write, hence I'm posting it here.**

**It's an AU, so instead of living in y'know...a titan infested town, they live in a suburban cul-de-sac...**

_**I just want them to be happy, darn it!**_

**Enjoy!**

**-Em**

* * *

A tiny finger presses into the Jaeger's doorbell, sending a sweet chime through the house.

"Mikasa, can you get that, please?"

The girl, of about 6 or 7 with long hair that tumbles just below the small of her back, climbs down from her chair to obediently answer the door. With a twist of the silver doorknob, the door that towers over her swings open to reveal a young Jean Kirschtein scratching small, irritated red bug bite on his forearm.

"Oh, hi, Mikasa." He greets with a prominent gap between his front teeth. It's new, and he received a whole dollar under his pillow for it, just a few days ago. He spent little to no time trading it in for a whole bag of mixed candy.

"Eren isn't home." She says simply, in that eerie monotone voice of hers.

"Oh," he looks crestfallen, scuffing his shoe on the doormat, "Where is he?"

"Out with his dad."

"Oh."

It's a long pause, and she's about to close the door when he speaks again, "You see, I just got a new bike, and I was wonderin' if he wanted to race with me."

"Okay."

"Do you want to race with me?"

"Do I?"

"Yeah. I wanna race."

"I don't have a bike."

He blinks, "You can use my old one, if you want. It's really fast, I promise, even if it isn't as fast as my new one, it's still fast."

She tugs on the scarf around her neck, "Okay."

* * *

After asking permission from Carla and putting on her sneakers, she walks up to Jean, whose sitting on the sidewalk outside her house.

"Race you to my house?" He asks, clumsily rising to his feet. He always clumsily doing something, his limbs growing long and sinewy much too fast for his equilibrium to keep up with. "I'm wearing my fast shoes right now."

"Okay."

On the agreed count of three, Jean takes off at two, and she follows after. It doesn't take long for her to catch up, and even zip past him, straight into the driveway of his home, feet slapping on the warm tar. He's breathing heavy, but doesn't seem too upset that he lost, perhaps because he's still holding on the hope of cashing in a victory on his bike.

He rounds the corner of his house and crosses the backyard to a shed planted neatly along a row of bushes. Unlatching the door, he enters and ushers her inside. The smell of gasoline and musty wood impales her nose as she avoids lazy cobwebs and sharp lawn equipment. Jean pulls a black bicycle nestled in a corner, rolling it over to her. The back wheel clatters, the result of a frayed _Pokemon_ card shoved between the spokes to slap against the rolling tire.

"Here's your bike, and here's mine," He grunts as he pulls his new bike from the same spot, a shiny, striking blue number. "Pretty cool, huh?"

He would later say the same thing about his first car, an old, gas-guzzler of an automobile that helped them share many awkward dates. But that's neither here nor there.

"Yeah, but I like this one," She answers, already so quick to defend her own bike, prideful of it's chipping paint and peeling seat cushion.

"Cool," He scratches at his arm, eyeing the back tire, "Ready to race?"

They pull the bikes out of the shed and mount them just outside the opening of the small shack. Jean's sneakers squeak as they slip on the pedals, and Mikasa's hands grip the steers with focused determination. She counts down, and again he takes off just before two is ushered from her lips. She's prepared this time, hot on his tail the minute his foot pushes off.

She tilts the bike from side to side, trying to get momentum as they pedal through the grass and out onto the asphalt. Jean's mother would later give him a stern reprimand for getting tire tracks on the lawn.

While there wasn't a set destination for the race to end at, the determination in their eyes as they pedal neck-to-neck is worthy of note. Her bike clicks as the card slaps over and over again, pushing her further and further forward, speeding past him before he clumsily tries to catch up, pitching his torso forward to try and give him speed.

She hits the last house at the end of the cul-de-sac, before the main street picks up, and slows to circle around, the wind combing its fingers through her hair and tailing it behind her as she glides on the pavement. He circles behind her, his cheeks red from exertion. She's won again, but he doesn't seem to mind, a smile plastered on his face as he rides around.

They stay like that for a while, circling the neighborhood, attempting to do wheelies and trying to see who can make the longest skid marks on the pavement. Eventually they double back to Jean's house, the promise of popsicles hanging from his lips. She has to wait outside while he attempts to sneak past his mother to the freezer, and rejoins her successfully, two bright blue pops in his hands.

* * *

They squat underneath a tree in his backyard to escape the sun, greedily lapping up the dripping sides before they can slide down their fingers in sticky lines. Jean finishes his first, the stick in his mouth, which is stained blue. He's the type of person who likes to bite into the ice.

"Why do you call Eren your brother?" He asks, his words skewed by the Popsicle stick pressed against the inside of his cheek.

"Because he is," she answers, matter-of-factly between licks of her own Popsicle.

"But you're not related, right?" He pulls it from his mouth once the juice as been sucked off, leaving only the taste of the wood, dropping it into the grass beside his knee. "You have different parents, right?"

She thinks about it for a moment, brooding with the popsicle in her mouth, "You call your step-dad your dad, right? But he's not really your dad, right?"

"That's different," He digs his hands in the grass, ripping it from the earth and dropping it in neat piles.

"How?"

He doesn't answer, just continues on making his grass piles. Eventually, she finishes her Popsicle, sticking the stick on top of one his growing grass hills.

"You should hang out with us more," Jean says, referring to him and the other kids on the cul-de-sac. Mikasa has a habit of only associating with Eren, and occasionally Armin.

"Okay."

"You're really cool."

"Thanks."

He purses his lips, peeking at her, "Hey, have you ever kissed anyone before?"

She wrinkles her nose, "No!"

"Me either."

"Okay."

"Is that all you ever say?"

"No," she states, "I say lots of stuff."

"I've never kissed anyone either." He repeats, persistent on the subject. He's seen his mom and step-dad kiss in the kitchen, and watched his buddy Connie kiss that Sasha girl once on a dare the guys made him do. He said that it was cool, even though she was wearing goopy grape lip gloss.

"Yeah, I know."

"Yeah."

A long pause.

"Can I kiss you?" He ponders. His eyes are trained on the piles of grass that tower over the tiny bugs that creep through the ground.

Another long pause.

"Why do you want to do that?" She asks gingerly, watching him spread his fingers through the ground, the grit and dirt digging up under his half-moon fingernails.

"Because you're pretty…y'know, for a girl." He makes a face, as if cooties were the first thing on his list, when in reality it was her lips, "And I want to see what the big deal is with kissing."

"Who has been making a big deal of it?"

He thinks of Connie, and how that idiot brags about how he kissed Sasha. He thinks about Marco and Bertolt and Reiner, and how they've all been dared to kiss one of the girls who huddle on a segment of sidewalk, fake baby strollers parked next to their scratched ankles. Ymir, Christa, Annie…there weren't enough lips that day for Kirschtein to be dared.

"Everyone in the neighborhood."

"Oh."

"So can I?"

"Sure, I guess."

He wasn't expecting such a blunt reply, so he steels himself for a moment, watching her face. She's studying him in that quiet way, waiting for something. She pulls her scarf off her neck, for it was obstructing her face.

He leans in, manages to knock his nose into hers as he rushes to make contact with her lips. It's only for a second that they meet, but he can faintly taste the artificial flavor of raspberry from the Popsicle on her lips. He deduces it must be much better than goopy grape lip gloss.

As if nothing happened, she wraps her scarf back around her cheeks and he sits there, absorbing what happened.

"Can I tell anyone?"

"No."


End file.
